Shoppers wait in line to purchase ammunition and guns at Gun World in Burbank on Tuesday, March 17, 2020, as U.S. sales of guns and ammunition soar amid the coronavirus outbreak. The store had a line down the block. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Pasadena Star-News/SCNG)

After Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam issued a 70-day stay-at-home order this week, a member of the White House press corps had a question for President Trump.

“Is that constitutional?” the reporter asked.

This was the president’s answer: “People are questioning that, but look, staying at home with respect to what we’re talking about doesn’t bother me at all. People should be staying at home. That’s what we want.”

That’s not an answer to the question.

This is an answer: “California’s state and local governments cannot simply suspend the Constitution. Authorities may not, by decree or otherwise, enact and/or enforce a suspension or deprivation of constitutional liberties. And they certainly may not use a public health crisis as political cover to impose bans and restrictions on rights they do not like.”

That is an excerpt from a federal civil rights lawsuit filed against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Burbank, and a number of other public officials in their official capacity. The plaintiffs include individuals, businesses and organizations that are challenging orders to close gun stores and shooting ranges during the coronavirus emergency.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller that this is an individual right, not requiring participation in a militia. In 2010, the high court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right that also applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, which bars any state from denying liberty to any person without due process of law.

The lawsuit was brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition, the California Gun Rights Foundation, the National Rifle Association of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, four individuals and three firearm and ammunition retailers, two of which are also shooting ranges. It makes the argument that the government cannot “close off the channels of access by which individuals lawfully obtain and transfer firearms and ammunition.” In California, the lawful process requires face-to-face transactions through state and federally licensed dealers. Online sales are not permitted.

So when L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva announced last week that he was ordering gun shops to close because they were not “essential businesses,” that left county residents without any legal means to exercise their Second Amendment right to obtain a firearm and ammunition for the protection of themselves and their families during the coronavirus emergency.

It’s the equivalent of pulling the broadcast licenses of every TV and radio station in order to prevent any risk of unhelpful information spilling out to the public. Technically, people still would have the First Amendment right to speak, but it’s hollow if the means of being heard have been revoked.

This is a question of freedom itself. If the government can declare an emergency without end based on a perceived threat, and then override constitutional rights at the whim of an elected official, we are not living in a free country.

The coronavirus isn’t the first ominous threat to human life that has confronted the nation. We’ve gone through two world wars, terrorist attacks and the threat of nuclear war, just to name a few. The Constitution is in force through all of it. No matter how scary the threat, the prospect of losing our freedom should be more terrifying by orders of magnitude.

In the space of a month, we have gone from living in a free country to being threatened with arrest for going to work. The mayor of Los Angeles said he will shut off the power and water to any business that’s found to be operating despite being declared “non-essential,” and he threatened the arrest of people who were uncooperative.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s declaration last week that gun stores were “non-essential” was quickly put on hold, then reinstated, and now it’s off again after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a memo on Saturday stating that workers supporting the firearms and ammunition industry are part of the nation’s “essential infrastructure.”

There’s no more essential infrastructure in the nation than the U.S. Constitution. We’re fortunate that defenders of the Second Amendment are reinforcing it.

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